Cambridge, MA—February 25, 2026—The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is awarding economic historian and labor economist Claudia Goldin the Talcott Parsons Prize. Goldin is the Samuel W. Morris University Professor, the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University and holds the Lee and Ezpeleta Professorship of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. She is also Co-Director of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Gender in the Economy working group.
Goldin’s work as an economist and historian has illuminated the role of women within the U.S. economy and globally. Her research, analysis, and writing encompass a range of related topics, including educational opportunity, gender-pay inequality, immigration trends, and technological change. Her multiple books include Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women (1990) and Career & Family: Women's Century-Long Journey Toward Equity (2021), which surveys decades of her scholarship.
Goldin won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2023. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992. In 1990, she became the first woman to be tenured in Harvard’s economics department.
“To truly understand the American economy, one must recognize Claudia Goldin’s essential work,” said Laurie L. Patton, President of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. “We commend her fearlessness, leadership, and commitment to understanding what is lost and what is gained for everyone when opportunities for women contract or expand. Her dedication to communicating that knowledge widely is equally courageous.”
“It is a great honor to receive an award named for Talcott Parsons that has been given to leading figures in linguistics, history, psychology, and sociology,” said Goldin. “I am immensely gratified that my work in economic history is seen as a bridge between economics and the other social sciences.”
First awarded in 1974, this prize honors Talcott Parsons, a sociologist and former president of the Academy. Previous recipients of the prize include Robert David Putnam (political science), William David Labov (linguistics), Joan Wallach Scott (history), Daniel Kahneman (psychology), and William Julius Wilson (sociology).
Goldin is receiving the award on April 16, 2026, at the Academy at an event with the American Philosophical Society and Phi Beta Kappa. All are invited to watch the ceremony online and may learn more and register here. The three organizations are convening in 2026, in America’s 250th year, to recognize the inextricable link between the founding of America and the pursuit of useful knowledge and to commemorate each organization’s longstanding commitment to democracy and knowledge.
This illustration of Claudia Goldin as Sherlock Holmes was created in recognition of her Nobel Prize by Johan Jarnestad at the The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. She is shown as an economist detective looking at a trove of historical data with an obedient and devoted golden retriever at her side.
Illustration by Johan Jarnestad @ the Royal Swedish Academy.